Being a groundskeeper for the Super Bowl means being a weather forecaster, scientist, farmer and painter.

Sometimes, it means breaking and entering.

It was the day before the 1991 Super Bowl between the Giants and Bills in Tampa, and a practice run for the next day’s halftime show killed the grass on the 50-yard line, the part that had the NFL shield logo.

While New Jersey native Ed Mangan stayed behind and dug a 1-foot-deep trench, other ground-crew members went on a search for sod.

"The gate’s locked," one of the groundskeepers told George Toma when they arrived in trucks at the University of Tampa soccer field.

"Back up and ram this thing," Toma said, and they stole 1,000 square feet of sod for the Super Bowl.

In his book, "Nitty Gritty Dirt Man," Toma says luckily he knew the college groundskeeper and was able to escape punishment.

Sure, it will be a challenge to keep the field playable during the first cold-weather outdoor Super Bowl on Feb. 2 at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford.

But the Super Bowl ground crew, headed by Mangan, a 54-year-old Middletown native, has faced obstacles before: Streakers (luckily they had blankets handy); a float leaving the field that couldn’t fit under the goalpost (they took down the goalpost); and a worn field at Tulane University (they spread sawdust and wood chips and shavings over the field and painted them green).

No detail is too small for the ground crew, which during lead-ups to past Super Bowls could be seen wrapping duct tape around their hands and crawling on the field to remove lint from the artificial turf.

Mangan was asked if worries over the weather were keeping him up at night.

"Yes it is. We worry about everything. Precipitation. Snow. Everything."

Today is the day the crew plans to paint the logos of the two teams in Super Bowl XLVIII, the Denver Broncos and the Seattle Seahawks. During the season, there are interchangeable end zone logos of the Giants and Jets.

Super Bowl field director Ed Mangan of Middletown, left, with his mentor, legendary groundskeeper George Toma, in the end zone of MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford. Mike Frassinelli/The Star-Ledger

Last week, the 4-year-old field with polyethylene turf fibers and rubber and sand was kept warm and dry under a giant tarp. The field has a drainage system but does not have a heating system underneath.

What happens if there is a blizzard during the Super Bowl, like Philadelphia had six weeks ago during the game between the Eagles and Lions?

"We’ve got the equipment to handle it and hopefully it won’t be as much (snow) as there," Mangan said. "But you’ve got to understand that keeping the lines clear and things like that, you can do that to keep the game going. But with that amount of snow, there’s only so much you can do with it. If you do take it off the field, where are you going to put it? You can’t stack it in the bench area. So you may have to just leave it out there and just keep the lines (visible) so that the game is legal, and play on."

Mangan’s mentor is Toma, the Babe Ruth of groundskeeping and the most famous groundskeeper since Bill Murray’s character in "Caddyshack."

The tsar of turf has tended the fields at all 47 previous Super Bowls and, even after open heart surgery over the summer, is back for his 48th — to be held on his 85th birthday.

It is a mutual admiration society for Mangan and Toma, who grew up in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

"The best," Mangan said of Toma. "The king."

"He’s a perfectionist," Toma said of Mangan. "He’s great, you can’t beat him. You know when you’re watching the halftime show, where do you think Eddie is? He’s underneath that stage, looking to see if there’s any damage."

They met at the Kansas City Royals minor league baseball camp in Florida in the 1980s, and Toma later recommended Mangan for jobs with the Atlanta Braves (Mangan’s gig when he’s not working the Super Bowl) and the National Football League.

Mangan is here for almost a month, staying at an apartment in Union and working 14-hour days, seven days a week, to prepare for America’s premier sporting event. He plans to return to Atlanta the day after the game. Being back home has meant that he has been able to see his younger brother, Mark, a captain with the New Jersey State Police.

Although Ed Mangan acknowledged the ideal would be to work on a field in weather that is 75 degrees and sunny, he noted: "Everybody likes a challenge, don’t we? We’ll make it."

"All of them have their different little anomalies or challenges, depending upon what’s going on," he said of Super Bowls. If Mangan does run into problems, he only has to turn to his mentor.

Toma might not have seen it all yet, but he has seen more than anyone else.

He marvels at how the stage crews handle the quick turnaround during the increasingly elaborate halftime shows. This year’s attraction is Bruno Mars.

"The first Super Bowl, we just had one band and then they had two people in jet suits," Toma recalled. "They flew up to the 50-yard line and shook hands."

There is a 32-person ground crew at the ready for the Super Bowl.

"Down in New Orleans, they had one of those steam Southern paddle boats as a prop for a halftime show, and they couldn’t get it off because it couldn’t fit underneath the goalpost," Toma said. "We didn’t waste no time. We have ladders and everything laying around if something like that happens. We got the goalpost down and the paddle boat went out."

Sometimes, things aren’t always what they seem on TV.

"We had the Chiefs and the Vikings down at the old Tulane University and they played there and there was no grass hardly," Toma said. "But we took sawdust and wood chips and shavings and put it all over the field and painted it green to make it look like grass."